Monday, April 5, 2010

Debate: The Short Sleeve Sweatshirt

For as often as the short sleeve sweatshirt shows up in countless McQueen style montages bloggers have been relatively gun shy on the issue. I, myself, think it is a cool idea in theory, but acknowledge that it is difficult to pull off - just ask Bill "The Human Boner" Belichick (granted I'm not talking about the hooded variety since we all know it can't hold a candle to the classic crew neck). I can see the arguments both for and against. On one hand you have the sloppy and "trying too hard" school of thought you often get when bringing up sweats in the first place and on the other side the classic cool camp who reps for this kind of gear consistently. The practicality of this sartorial maneuver seems linked to chillier summer nights just like any warm weather top layer - you know, the whole "keep your core warm, stay warm" thing. To get this look today you're more than likely going to have to cut the sleeves off of a standard crew neck unless you're fond of Rugby's branding (wait, you're not in "Skull and Snakes" club bro?) as they are the only option I found while doing the half-assed research that goes into every post (update: resident EG scholar Mister Crew has pointed me towards some older versionsfrom Daiki). What do you guys think? Leave it to Steve or let 'em breath?

Being an older guy who attended college in the '60's, it was not unusual to cut off the sleeves of sweats. But they had to be left unhemmed, or else why bother. Of course, it was a school in the north, so they were more like heavy short sleeve shirts.

I like the McQueen cut off version much better- main reason being it has loose sleeves that may be imperfectly cut if you're doing the cutting yourself. I can only imagine that the sleeves of the ones above will be tight on a built guy and while that's fine for some shirts, it's not fine for a short sleeve sweatshirt. The light blue one is something I'd actually buy for myself because it looks fitted and I think it would look good with denim cutoffs.

Club Monaco has one in their newest spring collection and I was a big fan of the colour of it but I can't see anyone pulling this off other than Mr. McQueen but I wouldn't mind someone trying to prove me wrong either. All in all, it's not for me.

My father - who went to military school and college in the early-mid 60s had several of the short sleeve sweatshirts (NOT cutoffs)....I couple were related to his division in military school, others his frat. But my sister and I wore them to death thru high school. they are/were great IMO.